pupa

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. The nonfeeding stage between the larva and adult in the metamorphosis of holometabolous insects, during which the larva typically undergoes complete transformation within a protective cocoon or hardened case.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. Used as a specific epithet

n. an insect in its development stage between a larva and an adult.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. Any insect in that stage of its metamorphosis which usually immediately precedes the adult, or imago, stage.

n. A genus of air-breathing land snails having an elongated spiral shell.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. The third and usually quiescent stage of those insects which undergo complete metamorphosis, intervening between the larval and the imaginal stage.

n. A stage in the development of some other arthropods, as cirripeds. See locomotive pupa, below.

n. [capitalized] In conchology, the typical genus of Pupidæ; the chrysalis - shells.

The pupa of the gnat [10] also has 'respiratory trumpets' serving the same purpose, but these are a pair of processes on the prothorax, so that the pupa, which is fairly active, hangs from the surface-film with its abdomen pointing downwards through the water.

The name "pupa" or doll, was given to the creature in this stage, because long ago people thought the way in which insects are thus enclosed was somewhat like the way in which the babies used to be wrapped round in bandages or "swaddling clothes": it is also called a "chrysalis," because sometimes dotted with gold or pearly spots.

At last it really seems tired of eating, and after it has cast its skin four times, the fifth one becomes thick and hard, and the caterpillar hangs itself by a fine silken thread of its own spinning to a twig, and passes into its second stage -- that of the "pupa," or chrysalis, from which it will awaken, a thing of life and beauty, to live in the air instead of crawling.

After eating this delicate morsel it devours the honey in the cells of the bee and changes into a white, cylindrical, nearly footless grub, and after it is full-fed, and has assumed a supposed "pupa" state, the skin, without bursting, incloses a kind of hard "pupa" skin, which is very similar in outline to the former larva, within whose skin is found a whitish larva which directly changes into the true pupa.